[ If you like gothic horror, you've come to the right place. H. Turnip Smith delivers a tale of terrible secrets and harsh retribution in classic style. ]

October 21st the phone call in the middle of the night awakened me from that rarest of luxuries: a good night's sleep. It was my old college companion Gregory. Yes, yes, depressed and needing to see an old friend and would I come. Of course, all expenses would be paid. Hadn't seen the man in fifteen years, but due to the strike, acting jobs were virtually non-existent, and Gregory having been my closest college companion, I packed my violin and my most treasured books Heaven and Hell by Swedenborg, Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holsberg, and Chartreuse and Ververt by Grosset and drove the three hours north out of Manhattan in bright sunshine.

Somewhere in sun-drenched Connecticut a black mailbox --- Dr. Gregory Marschak, Psychiatry -- marked the edge of the isolated estate, quite unremarkable from the highway. I drove back a rutted, cobblestone drive through three acres of white Northern birch; the rotting giants had flung down a carpet of desiccated leaves and sticks that obscured any trace of living grass. Here the gray sun faded, and the very air seemed to grow heavier and more oppressive the farther I got from the highway. In the deepening gloom near the edge of the pot-holed circular drive stood a rusting suit of armor while at the top of the drive moldered a once-elegant three-story brick manse with an un-repaired broken window on the third floor.

It had been fifteen years since I'd seen Gregory. Medical school had taken him one direction and my so-called "acting career" had taken me another. I was certain I'd again be shy in the presence of such a successful man. Moreover, the truth of the matter was I'd been in awe of him even in college. Five years older than I, it was he who sought me out as roommate.

Perhaps, at first I'd even suspected that his interest in me was sexual, but it was not. At any rate, we'd never been that intimate even in college, more like two year olds who play side by side but seldom interact; for we were both private persons, neither of us in the least extroverted nor particularly robust individuals, united in our own solitariness and our mutual admiration for Jacobean tragedy, the original Lugosi Dracula film, and David Bowie. However, I was somewhat unprepared for the spectral figure with thinning shoulder length hair and opaque glasses who met me at the door in a purple silk lounging jacket.

Gregory stood at the doorway framed by a white marbled alcove that faced a kidney shaped sitting room decorated all in white. The only sound was the rhythmic beating of a preternaturally loud, gigantic grandfather's clock.

"I do apologize for having no one here to carry your luggage," Gregory said with that resonant voice I so remembered. "Serving staff have all resigned except for the cook."

"No need to apologize, old friend," I said. "I'm quite used to carrying my own bags. Unemployed actors sometimes do spot labor on the docks when necessary you know. Just nice to be away from the bustle of Manhattan."

"I'm sure it is. Well, Thomas, I'd give you a hand except for my eyes," he said, reaching towards me uncertainly.

His eyes? Of course now I remembered; the macular degeneration had progressed. That explained the dark glasses and why his hand failed to locate me.

"I'm legally blind now you see," he went on. "The retina problem has accelerated. There's absolutely nothing that can be done."

"No wonder you're depressed," I said. "If there's anything I can do."

"No need for sympathy. It's just so wonderful having you here. You don't know how many times I've thought of you over the years. You were always so special. Not a herd runner. But come let me take your hand. Since the blindness, I do much of my seeing through my hands. I find they're so much more sensitive than the crude impressions registered by the eyes. "

Dropping my luggage, unwillingly I extended a hand, for the human touch had always been repugnant to me. Gregory's long, tapered fingers took my own. I'm sorry to say his marble cold hand unnerved me, and as usual my palms burst into a familiar sweat. I shivered as his fingers so full of curiosity traced my palm and the back of my hand as well.

"You've given up marijuana haven't you?" he said.

"Yes, no more childhood pursuits, but how did you know?"

"The texture of the skin is an elegant witness. However, I'm, sorry to learn that your anxiety has been such a problem."

How could he know? Feeling ill at ease, with Gregory still holding my hand and reading my life like an open book, I shrank away, withdrawing from his grasp. "Oh come on, Greg, this visit isn't about me. It's a shame about your depression."

"Feel this," he answered, pressing my hand along the base of his throat.

Even to my medically untrained hand it was obvious the pulse beat feebly. He's not well I thought. It's good that I've come. Perhaps I can help him.

"You are feeling true depression," he said. "Pulse fifty beats per minute. Morbid, suicidal depression. I mention it not to ask for sympathy, but only because I think you can identify with such melancholia."

My God he remembered that incident in college when I'd used the razor blade. I'd obliterated it from my own mind.

"Suicide no longer haunts me," I said. "Anxiety has become my bete noir."

"Ah, it's well you're here then. Perhaps we can have some luck with hypnosis, and even if not The Birches is a terribly tranquil place, but before we go on with this conversation, you're not even unpacked. I'm sure you're starved and in need of a bath. You're room is at the top of the stairs to the right. I won't accompany you up if you don't mind."

The guest room, too, was, all in white, but oddly it housed a bizarre collection of Medieval weapons hung from its walls: a morning star, a spiked ball with chain; a truncheon; a mace. So odd I thought, and then I remembered Gregory's fascination with all things ancient.

###

That evening there were three of us for candlelight dinner of lamb cutlets with quince jelly. The food arrived via a dumb waiter so we were not in the least disturbed. The third party was Gregory's half-sister, a professor of art at a nearby college. Spectral, anorexic, face powdered white, Lilly was clad in a black net gown that revealed elegant shoulders of deathly white pallor. After a perfunctory shake of my hand, she inquired as to what I thought of "Patience" by Balthasar Klossowski de Rola. I was ignorant of post-modernist art and must have answered the wrong thing, for she shuddered and afterwards resisted all small talk, sinking into gloomy maundering in front of her Beaujolais. As the candles flickered and a steady rain beat against the drafty casement windows, Gregory made a heroic effort to keep things cheerful and normal. However, when we'd finally run out of chit-chat, he said, "Would you be so kind as to honor Lilly and me with a piece on your violin, Thomas?"

How I loved to play! I chose "The Ride of the Valkyries"; my fingers flew across the strings with unaccustomed celerity as my host and his sister surreptitiously pinched white dust up their nostrils.

"Bravo! Bravo. Masterpiece," Gregory cried as I, sweating with the effort, finished. The cocaine seemed to have energized Gregory. He swooped across the shadowy room and ran his fingers up my cheeks.

"Oh the warmth," he exulted. "Music is the revelation of the inner soul. You are man transformed when you play. All anxiety is banished."

He was quite correct, but his fingers tracing my eye sockets and temples unnerved me once more. Perhaps he sensed my uneasiness, for he immediately ceased and turned to Lilly. He ran his fingers across her lips and along the lines of her bare shoulders.

"Energy boils within this woman's countenance," he said. "She's psychic you know."

"No, I didn't," I said, happy to have something substantial to talk about. "Could you do a reading?" I said to her.

"Of course, she'll read. Won't you, Lilly?" Gregory interjected. "Do you have something old and cherished she might examine?"

I slid off the tiny green pinkie ring my mother had given me before she died in the fire and gave it to Lilly. She blanched at the very touch of the ring.

"Fire," she said, shuddering, and I nodded. Her high, white forehead knitted into a deeply-creased frown.

"I see something very tragic befalling you soon," she went on.

I was so uneasy I laughed, digging my fingers into my palm and said, "Thank god this psychic business is all make believe."

"Do you really think that?" Gregory said.

"Well there's no scientific proof of it. No one's ever verified it in a scientific experiment." I was not half so confident as I sounded.

"Those who deny the hidden dimensions of human existence are spiritually barren and as ignorant as those of an earlier generation who denied the existence of bacteria," Lilly said.

"Come now, Lilly. Don't exaggerate," Gregory said, taking a sip from his brandy snifter.

"I don't exaggerate!" Lilly said with finality.

After that we uneasily shared several more glasses of sherry, then Lilly took her leave in a tiny black Austin Morris, and I went off to bed. I read Holberg for what must have been an hour before, for some odd reason, I found myself standing at the window, staring off into the gloom-ridden, white woods. The forest was illuminated by a three- quarters moon that cast milky streamers through the shadowy trees in strange grotesque shapes that I swear whispered at me. Thank God there was nothing to what Lilly had said, but then the fire, she'd known about the fire! The hair on the back of my neck shivered and stood up. Why was I trembling? I didn't know, but certainly I slept little that night.

It was deep in the night. I found myself unable to sleep again. Mournfully, I lay down my Swedenborg and went to the window to stare out as a chill wind blew through the birches bending their pliant limbs. The mansion lay so silent I could hear the steady ticking of the grandfather's clock downstairs. And then I heard a disturbing sound; there were footsteps along the hall outside my room.

"Gregory?" I called out.

There was no answer.

"Gregory?" I called again. Now I crept to the door and listened. I could distinctly hear breathing on the other side. Summoning my courage, I threw open the door only to see a ghostly figure disappearing down the hall. By the pale, spectral light of the moon I caught a flashing glimpse of the golden beret that Gregory used to bind his plaited hair. And then there was silence. Quite unnerved, I sat reading until nearly dawn.

Halloween arrived with a sudden early and surprise cloak of snow dusting the vast, dark woods and grounds of The Birches. White lay on white in a foreboding pattern that made me uneasy even as I arose. Through the interminable day Gregory worked with a handful of patients while I read Chartreuse and Ververt and lounged about the mansion. Darkness finally fell across the glittering patina of snow.

I was smoking a cigarette and watching the flakes continue to fall through the wan twilight on a small porch facing the rear of the estate when Gregory suddenly appeared behind me.

"Stunning view isn't it?" he said.

"Fabulous."

"Don't mean to interrupt," he went on, "but how would you like to work on that anxiety? We could do it for free."

"Of course," I replied. Anxiety is a curse and I would have done anything to reduce its burden.

"Perhaps we can try hypnosis among other strategies," Gregory said. "Come down to my office and we'll work on things."

Gregory's office was in the basement, which his patients reached by a side entrance. Like the upstairs, his office area was all in white though the décor was contemporary and upbeat with a scattering of non-representational paintings by Mondrian and Kandinsky. Gregory took a sinuous, form-fitting Danish modern chair and ushered me to another separated from him by a low, dark table.

"Well where should we begin?" he said.

"That's up to you," I said.

"Well then why don't you describe the onset of your symptoms."

Relaxing into the chair, I went into the days following my suicide attempt and the subsequent development of this terrible angst as against my father's wishes I went to Manhattan to pursue a career on the stage.

"As I recall it was about that same time your mother died in the fire," Gregory said.

That was a memory I chose not to deal with. "Look I don't think we need to get into that," I said. "It's over."

"Is it?" Gregory said. "What are you hiding from?"

"I'm hiding from nothing."

"Thomas, I'm afraid you've allowed your father's negative evaluation to ruin your life, but have you ever considered the character of the man whose judgments have fettered you -- your father?"

"My father's character is excellent."

"Let's re-examine the fire that took your mother's life then." Gregory sat bolt upright, a stern expression suddenly freezing his jaw-line. "I don't suppose you realize that your father locked your mother in the house intentionally that evening? The fire was set."

"That's a damn lie," I shouted.

"Is it? You do know I've treated your father for many years. I'm quite well acquainted with what really happened."

"You may have treated Father, but that's not the truth about the fire!"

"Denial then? Well maybe it's too much for you to handle at this moment." He took my hand consolingly. "Why don't we try some hypnosis to bring the tension level down."

"The hell with hypnosis," I shouted, wrenching my hand free. "I'm leaving," but Gregory continued to talk soothingly, and soon he had me convinced that hypnosis was the thing. He took out a golden pocket watch and allowed it to swing gently before my eyes.

"Now just concentrate on the watch and relax. Relax now. You're becoming very sleepy. Your hands are getting heavy. Very heavy."

The next thing I knew I was in bed back in the Medieval chamber. I woke up to more falling snow. Across the room a pale sliver of moon cast feeble shadows of limbs that seemed to beckon in agony. Wide awake, I sat up in bed, and then I caught my breath. Someone or something was sitting silently beside me on the bed. It was then I registered a cold hand caressing my neck and my naked chest. Intolerable!

In a sudden fury of violation I leapt out of bed and seized the morning star from the wall. Unable to restrain myself, I whirled and brought the spiked steel ball crashing down on the skull of the intruder. Bone caved in with a sickening thud, and I swung again and then a third time. Without a sound the violator of my privacy sank to the floor in a twisted heap.

Suddenly comprehending what I had done, that I was now a cold-blooded murderer, I gave a low, desperate moan when I again heard movement in the hall and saw the dim flicker of a yellowish light. Then the door to my room slowly swung open, and a figure bearing a candle shuffled in.

"Is that you? I heard the sounds of a struggle." Gregory's deep, unmistakable voice broke the silence.

"God, Gregory, I thought I'd murdered you," I murmured, "but who then?"

Gregory crossed the room, holding the candle high over the crushed form on the floor by the bed.

"Lilly," he said in sepulchral tone "Obviously dead."

"I've murdered her, Greg. I'm a murderer. But I didn't mean to. I was frightened and feeling violated. I just reacted."

Gregory was deadly calm. "No matter. Her life was so badly lived it's best ended. She was addicted and schizoprenic as well. But we don't want the police involved We must do something with the body."

"Yes. Yes. Of course."

"Here, we'll wrap her in a sheet," he said "and bury her in the woods."

He had me tear a bloody sheet loose from the bed and spread it on the floor, and we bent to lift Lilly's emaciated, broken body. However, when we lifted, it was like trying to buck a great pillar of stone.

"God she's heavy," I breathed.

"They say the corpse of an evil person is unbearably heavy."

"Why do you say she was evil, Gregory?"

"Lilly never met a man she didn't sleep with," he said. "Your father, too, was one of her lovers."

"That's a damn lie, Greg," I said, looking at him in a blaze of fury.

"I've many faults, Thomas, but lying is not one of them. Now you must lead the way into the woods to find a suitable burial spot."

Seething with anger towards Gregory and a host of other conflicting feelings, I said nothing as I wrestled Lilly's corpse onto the sheet. Breathing heavily, we staggered with it to the elevator, then dragged the body into the woods. As we pulled our horrible burden along, a smear of incriminating black scarred the dimly-lit snow as a thin wind susurrated through the trees. When at length we reached a point deep in the woods where we were too exhausted to go on, Gregory finally said, "We've gone far enough. You go back to the garage and find a shovel."

Full of wild energy and anxiety, I raced back along the path under the spectral moon and fumbled about the garage until I found a shovel. Then I dashed back to the point deep in the woods where Gregory stood calmly smoking a cigarette. Feverishly I began to dig; but to my surprise; the earth refused to yield to the blade.

"God what is it?" I cried, "the shovel won't work."

"Nonsense," Gregory answered.

"It's not nonsense," I cried. "The earth won't give."

"Ah," Gregory said knowingly, "there's an old Carpathian legend. The earth refuses to accept the burden of evil. You must get a pick axe."

I raced back through the snow and found a pick axe. Returning to the spot, I swung with all my might, but the earth refused to yield. I tried a second place, a third, a fourth! The same results.

"The legend is true," Gregory finally said. "We must use fire."

Gasoline and newspaper served well enough. Lilly's pyre burned with a ghastly bluish glow, illuminating the woods with shapes phantasmagoric. Tears coursed down my cheeks as I watched

"Gregory," I said, "I know this will haunt me. How will I dispel the guilt? Is there anything -- anything I can do?"

I watched as he slowly put the white powder to his nose again, finally he spoke in sepulchral tones.

"There's something you don't know, Thomas."

"What?" I cried.

"Four years ago Lilly gave birth to a child; the father was Afro-American. She chose not to raise the boy. She's left it in the care of an elderly woman in Flemington, a nearby village. Your father pays the woman an annual stipend to keep the child. Unfortunately the child does not thrive."

"My father this! My father that! Why do you torture me with my father, Gregory?"

"Truth is bitter medicine, Thomas."

I threw my hands in the air in disgust. "Well what of the child anyway?"

"You could expiate your sins by raising the child."

"That's utter nonsense," I cried.

"Is it so much nonsense?" Gregory said. "We could go there now and see the boy. The woman is well paid; she asks no questions. You could take him back to Manhattan with you. No one would be the wiser."

I sighed morosely. "I don't know what to do, Gregory. OK, we'll go see the child."

The nine miles into the village seemed like a thousand as I drove reluctantly, filled with confusion, Gregory staring silent and sightless into the darkness, my headlights yellow and forbidding on the road. As instructed, the old woman had left the child on the porch of the rotting mansion where she lived at the edge of the village.

I don't know what I expected, but when I saw the child, it registered what Gregory had meant by "failure to thrive."

Although four years old, the shriveled, brown child was hardly larger than an infant. His face was some sort of twisted parody of an old man's. A thread of mucous escaped his nose.

"Where are we going, Gregory?" the child's voice was spidery and innocent.

"There's someone who wants to talk to you, Jacob, perhaps adopt you." Gregory took the boy's hand.

"Can we get something to eat?" the child said.

"Later, Jacob."

The child walked clumsily and feebly to the car. I could hardly believe my eyes. Was he one of those children who had been confined to a closet all his life? I said nothing as the lad trustingly settled between Gregory and me on the front seat. The innocent boy sat rocking himself hypnotically, a low humming, almost a moan, issuing from his mouth as we drove slowly back towards the Birches.

My head churned with every imaginable thought. The child! The police! My father! Lilly! Gregory! And now the old woman knew! There was evidence, evidence everywhere! Anger! Guilt! Anxiety! My palms rivered with sweat. I was trapped. How could a hedonistic wretch like me ever be a father to this child?

What madness had led Gregory even to suggest it? Gregory! Gregory was the heart of the problem. He held me like an insect in his hand. He could crush me in an instant. At that moment it became clear to me what must happen.

###

I seldom permit myself to think about either fire now. Success as an actor has not come easily, nor has being a father. Jacob is twelve years old, in private school, and doing fine except I see so much of Gregory and Lilly in his every mannerism and gesture.

Unfortunately memories of the past do little to buoy one's confidence. Only one adult soul knew that I had visited Gregory's estate that week. The fire consumed all evidence including Gregory's body. It was a simple matter to do to the man who had destroyed the character of my father exactly what I had done to Lilly.

At first the fire blazed a peculiar, reluctant green as though struggling for breath; then it roared to life with a blazing, triumphant orange that illuminated the snow-capped forest for miles.

Of course, Jacob and I were on the highway headed to New York by the time the local fire units arrived, no doubt befuddled as to the cause of the conflagration. I read about it all in an obscure article in the New York Daily the next day.

Now years later that I am a star as well as a father, in Gregory's memory I wear my hair shoulder length, but I absolutely refuse to wear that effeminate golden ornament which plaited his locks behind. However, that face, that troubled face of Lilly, never leaves me alone, and in the white, cool darkness of autumn nights, too often I see a wraith-like figure standing beside my bed. And then I must be sure the lights are always on, and I must take pills to ward off the nightmares that follow. How I wish it had never happened! How I wish I had had a different father! And oh how I pray Jacob, tiny Jacob, will reach adulthood, unscathed, never ever to know the truth concerning his past.

H. Turnip Smith, recently voted the most boring man in the Mid-West by Grandmothers Who Knit, is a medium-sized, slightly off-white vegetable slowly working his way towards the grave in Dayton, Ohio. For more of the vegetable-man's stories, go to LookSmart and plug in his name.